15.6.16

This week the Horror Duo take their summer vacation to the land down under -- Australia! And in typical Aussie fashion, they review a pair of animal attack flicks from the outback. Forest falls in love with Long Weekend, and Cory raves about Razorback -- both written by Everett De Roche.

Between fishing with Crocodile Dundee and getting shit-faced on Fosters Beer, they chat about the upcoming sequel to Mel Gibson's (another Aussie) Passion of the Christ, what a new Friday the 13th re-make could bring & Ron Perlman does Lovecraft... Yep, we'll leave it at that. All this and Forest wants your help! He's getting a new hat, and with a new hat he needs new pins to ware on it. Send him your sexy, sexy pins and we will share them with the world.

Alright fucknuts, you wanna diss Passion of the Christ? This means war. Keep in mind I'm not a Christian, haven't been for many years now, so I'm defending this movie as a non-Christian-Catholic-Pedolictian-whatever the fuck other "believe in Jesus" religion there is out there. Because I believe it's a good movie. I can respect those who say the movie isn't to their tastes, but I won't respect those who think it's a legitimate bad movie for supposed legitimate reasons.

So, first complaint from Forest: 2 hours of beating Jesus.

My response: What are you, a pussy? The beating doesn't really start until the film is nearly halfway through. Up until the whipping scene, there's some punching, shoving, and slapping, that doesn't last any longer than 2 minutes tops, TOPS! The Brave Fucking Frog had harsher beatdowns for its first hour than this film did, and that's a kid flick! It's a fucked up kid flick, but it's a kid flick none-the-less. It's 1 hour of beating goddamnit!

Second complaint from Forest: Too violent. Too much falling down while carrying the cross and bleeding.

My response: You know, people focus on the violence in films classified as torture-porn, but any respectable critic would know what else to look for. "Oooooh, violence, violence, and more violence. I can't take it!" That's like watching a war film and only focusing on the bullets, explosions, and ripping body parts to shreds and blood and internal organs and the horrors of war and on and on. There's also the things that fit between the gaps in violence, and this movie has gaps. They're thin gaps, and most viewers think that is an excuse to say the gaps between the violence don't exist, but that's a fatal mistake. The things to look for are the people's reaction to the violence. The guards, members of the crowd, the Jews, those close to Jesus, and just random faces. It's a statement on humanity, seeing the very people who once welcomed Jesus with open arms turn on him, while others who still have respect for him are calling to a stop to the madness. And then there are those whom we see become changed from the experience of seeing him suffer, not just from his sermons and speeches. It's seeing the reactions to the violence that makes the statement. And many choose to ignore that when they critique this film because of their bias and weak stomachs. Not to mention the title of the film, the definition of "passion", how it has dual meanings, and how both definitions are displayed in the movie, one blunt, one subtle.

I go more in depth with my analysis of the film, and my critique on critics who trashed it (oh, you're not the first, and I have experience in dealing with the critics). My massive letterboxd review:http://letterboxd.com/gex/film/the-passion-of-the-christ/

I will say this, I don't think the film is perfect. I have some gripes with the role of Jesus' mother Mary, a couple things she did in the film. So don't think I'm putting this film on some gold fucking pedestal, that space is for The Dark Crystal, Aliens, Bestmaster, The Terminator, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Robocop.

If you have more attacks to make on that film, I say BRING IT! I'll take them all on and smash them all down.

*sigh* Anyway, with all that out of the way, I liked Razorback, I think I'll take your advice and buy it. I do need to check out Long Weekend. Keep up the entertaining SFX bits that display your grade A professional acting talents.

Re: Passion of the Christ - I myself am a Christian and I like to think that I make a reasonable attempt to take my religion seriously (although some of my colleagues may not see my love of trash cinema to be wholly appropriate). That said, I haven’t seen Passion of the Christ nor do I plan on doing so. I respect Mel Gibson for desiring to express his religious beliefs in a movie, but it isn’t to my taste.

I always found it weird that some Christians I talked to went so far as to place this movie as part of the foundations of their faith…people whom I know didn’t read the Bible regularly or stuff like that.

Even weirder was the backlash from people in Hollywood who accused the film of anti-Semitism on the grounds that it blamed the Jews for Christ’s death. I never figured that part out. I mean, if one were to see the New Testament as a work of religious fiction, then I suppose you could change it so that only the Romans were to blame, much in the same fashion that Disney changes the source material for their cartoons. But as Mel Gibson (and millions of others) accepts the New Testament as a historical document as much as a religious text, then who else could Mel Gibson attribute the blame to for Christ’s death? Pre-Islam Arabs? Wouldn’t that be whitewashing history? The mind boggles.

I find it funny that THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST made like 400 million dollars in the States or so, but when some other filmmakers made a movie about THE NATIVITY starring a young actress from New Zealand who had been nominated for an Oscar for THE WHALE RIDER, that movie was largely ignored by audiences. I guess there was less sensationalism and free publicity garnered from controversy about it.

Unrelated Question: If the Michael Bay-produced FRIDAY THE 13th remake made a healthy bit of money at the box office, why are they remaking it so quickly instead of just making a sequel?